Grammar curiosities 10: be going
Following on from my previous post on the present continuous, I pose this question – isn’t be going to actually
Read more.23rd May 2019
A different kind of Beginner-level book 3: choosing which vocabulary to teach
Making choices about vocabulary: teaching what’s relevant to most students, responding to individuals In our last post, we looked at
Read more.13th May 2019
A different kind of Beginner-level book 2
Just enough grammar and a spiral syllabus In our last post on teaching beginner-level students, we stated this principle: While
Read more.28th April 2019
A different kind of Beginner-level book 1
If that’s what it’s not, what is it? My post about the Beginner syllabus and short answers with auxiliaries has
Read more.8th April 2019
In Memoriam: Remembering Michael Lewis
Like many of you, my first encounter with Michael Lewis came via his seminal 1993 book The Lexical Approach: The
Read more.31st March 2019
Why don’t we teach more grammatical chunks at low levels?
One of the curiosities of the dominant grammar syllabus at low levels is that certain ‘higher-level’ grammar does occasionally creep
Read more.28th March 2019
Grammar curiosities (and some nonsense) 9: the present continuous
It is curious how grammar is sometimes divided up. For example, while most teachers nowadays are quite happy to section
Read more.6th March 2019
Grammar nonsense (and some curiosities) 8: short answers and auxiliaries
Following on from the previous post about the way the syllabus in most Beginner-level books is constructed, one of the
Read more.25th February 2019
Grammar nonsense 7: the syllabus for Beginners
It’s been quite a while since we last published a post in this particular series. Writing both a Beginner-level book
Read more.14th February 2019
Translation: Tackling the Taboo part 2
In the first post on tackling the taboo that surrounds using any form of translation in the language classroom, I
Read more.17th January 2019